A Tragedy to be Repeated?

In the summer of 1936, an Olympic Games of unprecedented grandeur was held in Berlin, Germany, amidst the sly grins of the Nazis, with Adolf Hitler making the opening speech. The flames of the relay torch, the first in the games' history, lit the sky throughout the Games, and in the end Germany was a proud winner of the most gold medals. Three years later, Germany blitzed through Poland, the Second World War broke out and the world was plunged into havoc.

This was a tragedy in the history of Olympic Games. In the 1930s, there was no shortage of people with insight; the evil nature of the Nazis was apparent, and there had been opposition to holding the Olympic Games in Berlin. The International Olympic Committee even sent an investigatory team to Berlin in 1934.

At the time, the existence of Nazi atrocities was known despite the regime's rhetoric and denials. It was a combination of short-sightedness, bias, self-deception, and numbness, rather than the Nazis' deceitful tricks, that led the world's major nations to adopt appeasement policies. Acquiescence to the evil meant collaboration with the wolf, and being bitten by the wolf was inevitable. So, when the Second World War was over, the international community concluded that safeguarding human rights is the cornerstone of world peace, and that the threat tyranny poses to one area is a threat to all areas.

A review of the 20th century indicates that, compared to the Nazis, the communist movement brought more horrendous crimes to humankind. The Nazis vanished as the Second World War ended, but communism spread like a noxious weed. After causing tens of millions of deaths, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the evil communist movement's last fortress, is using the Beijing Olympic Games to fight for its survival and deceive the world. Time seems to be going back to the summer of 1936.

The Nazis' genocide, grisly as it was, is dwarfed by that of the CCP. Since it took power in 1949, the CCP has launched a never-ending string of so-called "political movements," which ultimately led to the untimely deaths of 80 million Chinese people. The latest movement, the one against Falun Gong, continues today. The tragedies that happened in Nazi concentration camps were so horrifying that some people today cannot believe that they happened. But they did happen. The Party's animal-like behavior today--making money through harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners, an evil deed never seen on this planet--cries out for us to take concrete actions to stop it.

The biggest value of historical tragedies lies in their potential to help avoid repetition. The forthcoming 2008 Beijing Olympic Games raises the important question to the international community: to repeat the tragedy or to choose a better future?

The tragedy of the Berlin Olympic Games should not be allowed to be repeated in Beijing. The price for a recurrence could be higher. The world missed the opportunity to try to stop the Nazi atrocities through resisting the Berlin Olympic Games, but today has the historic opportunity of the Beijing Olympic Games to try to stop the CCP from perpetuating its despotic policies. The Party focuses its time, energy, and money on persecuting Falun Gong, and the harm and violence it brings are spreading in China and overseas. An end to the persecution of Falun Gong will be a turning point for the overall situation in China. The day hte regime stops it's violence, China will begin a peaceful transformation, and the scourge that the CCP has caused to the world will be absorbed and eliminated.

The world community includes more than just sovereign states and nations, more than international organizations and groups such as the International Olympic Committee. In fact, it is a community of every individual human being on Earth. The conscience of the international community is first and foremost that of each human being, and then that of various international organizations and governments. To put it another way, when a president of a state or the chairman of the International Olympic Committee makes a decision, a lot will be at stake. The only correct way for him to judge the real value of that decision is to act out of compassion.